Beedie School’s Sam Thiara receives Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal
Dec 18, 2012
Sam Thiara, Associate Director of Undergraduate Alumni Engagement at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, a special commemorative medal honouring the significant contributions and achievements by Canadians. The award is being given to Thiara in recognition of his outstanding engagement and leadership.
Thiara has worked with hundreds of students and alumni since joining SFU’s Beedie School in 2004, and has also volunteered countless hours for various community initiatives in Metro Vancouver and beyond.
An alumnus of SFU as well as the University of Exeter in England, Thiara joined the Beedie School in 2004 as a manager of student recruitment and engagement. To date he has worked as a mentor and coach to hundreds of students, both as individuals and as teams, and recently helped coach a team of students to a silver medal at the International Institute for Business Development Case Competition in Thailand.
Prior to joining SFU, Thiara worked as the Community Consultation Manager for the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Bid Corporation, where he was responsible for building relationships with communities and providing the public with information about the bid.
Thiara has participated in the Vancouver Board of Trade’s Leaders of Tomorrow program since it was established in 1999, and last year received the Mentor of the Year award. The Leaders of Tomorrow initiative is a student mentorship program that engages final year post-secondary students with industry professionals from across the Lower Mainland.
An accomplished speaker and storyteller, Thiara has been involved with over 20 volunteer organizations from the board to volunteer level throughout his career and has documented many of his experiences on his blog, sams50-50.com/.
Thiara’s motto is one often heard during his presentations, like last spring’s TedXSFU: “Everyone’s life is an autobiography, but you have to make yours worth reading!”
Thiara will be presented with the Diamond Jubilee Medal at a special ceremony to be held in North Vancouver. The medal was created to mark the 2012 celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s accession to the Throne as Queen of Canada. The commemorative medal has been awarded to 60,000 Canadians this year to honour the significant contributions and achievements of the recipients.
For more information about the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, visit www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=14019&lan=eng.